


Rebuilding

by revise_leviathan



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Gen, Mostly Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 23:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3788149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revise_leviathan/pseuds/revise_leviathan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home has meant a lot of things over the years to Shun, but if they ever win this war, he'll change its meaning back to what it meant when he was a child.</p>
<p>Response to the Arc-V 30 Day Challenge Day 20: I'm Home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebuilding

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit rambly and speculative but HAVE IT ANYWAY.

_“I’m home.”_

_“Welcome back.”_

It’s a familiar exchange, if a generic one, and back in the days before Heartland’s destruction, Shun relied on it. If he heard her say it every day when she came home, he knew Ruri was safe, and he could go on happy. So every day, he listened for it, and was rewarded with comfort for another long while.

The first day he remembered not hearing it was the day Heartland fell. Running out into the city in blind panic was a stupid move in hindsight, but it got him to her, and to Yuto, who’d been halfway to Shun’s house at the time – his own parents had been out, and were probably dead already.

By the time they got back home, though, it was empty. The door was ajar, and though the house was empty of soldiers as well, none of them felt quite right staying there knowing what had probably happened. So they ran, and for the next three years they gained and lost new family, while home was nothing more than the next empty warehouse or convenient back-alley for the night.

They still used it as code, though. _“I’m home”_ became synonymous with _“I’m safe”_ , which was what it should have always been – what it would have still been without the invasion. And so they came home, one after another, every day, until that one day in their third year when Yuto came home, but Ruri didn’t.

They’d gotten no less ‘stupid’, or perhaps no less emotional, in that three years, but all running served to do this time was catch them up just fast enough to see her vanish in the hands of someone with Yuto’s face. Suddenly, without the three of them together, the idea of ‘home’ vanished like brief breath.

The war went on around them, and when Yuto vanished too, there was nothing left to cling to, even if Sakaki was still keeping his soul. It wasn’t the same to Shun. Having his soul didn’t make Sakaki any more like the friend he’d fought alongside for years now. But the warriors of Standard insisted on making him one of them, and so, he supposed, that was his new home. It didn’t feel quite right, and it would never be the same as the one he once had, but perhaps it would do, for now.

And maybe one day in the future, after the war had been won or dissolved like dust, he would see them and hear them again, coming to greet him with those well-worn words.

“I’m home.”

And he would reply just as he had always done, one thing that had never changed even through being broken and rebuilt by the war.

“Welcome back.”

If he had to – if _they_ had to, they would rebuild home with their own hands to do it.


End file.
